


Just Tell Me When

by Overdressedtokill (SkyeStan)



Series: Vamps AU [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:38:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1976328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyeStan/pseuds/Overdressedtokill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ward brings Skye home. Vampire History 101 ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Tell Me When

The first thing Skye does when they arrive at Ward’s apartment is make a beeline for his bathroom.  He hasn’t even turned the lights on yet, and she’s already found the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the shower.

Which settles that, he supposes.  He shrugs off his jacket, rolls his shoulders, tidies up a few loose ends for when Skye comes out of the bathroom.  He’s not messy by any means, but a little dusting for company never hurt anyone.

  
  


Except that Skye isn’t company.  She’s his progeny.  She lives here now.

  
  


He spares a glance to the couch.  He’s going to have to buy another bed, at some point.  And furniture shopping is always such a nightmare.  He could get used to the couch, probably.  And Skye will have the bed.  That should work.

  
  


The water’s stopped.  It’s been longer than he thinks.

  
  


“Ward!” Skye calls.  “Ward, come here!”

He lets himself into the bathroom, but only because the urgency in her tone makes him panic.  For no reason, but he realizes that only after he comes in.  His tub is caked with dirt and blood.  And the floor is soaking wet.  And Skye’s still in a towel.

“What?” he says.  He looks directly at her face. 110% at her face. That is where his focus is.

“I think I’ve got it under control,” she says.  “The fang-boner thing.”

“Fang-boner?” he asks.

“Yeah!” she says.  “Like when your fangs pop out in response to blood.  It’s the same thing as when you pop a boner for something sexual.  So, fang-boner.”  She lets the term linger.

“Clever,” he manages.  He’s not going to tell her that ‘fang-boners’ also happen in sexual situations.  He had to fight one off, actually, when he walked into the bathroom to find her with dripping hair and barely covered skin.  But he’s almost one hundred, and he can control himself.

“Let me see them,” she says.  She reaches for his mouth.  “Let’s compare fangs.” 

He twists away from her hand.  “You already saw them,” he says.  “At the diner? Remember?”

“That was for like, two seconds,” she protests.  “Come on.”

“This isn’t-” he says, and then her fingers find his lips and his fangs pop out without him even thinking about it.  She’ll think it was on purpose, and that’s what he’s going to stick with, damn it.  The idea that his baby vampire touching his lips with her clean little fingers could make him do _that_ like a teenager is just embarrassing.

“Yours are bigger,” she says.  “Ugh.  Mine are so lame compared to yours!”

He catches sight of his reflection in the bathroom mirror.  “I’m bigger,” he says.  “Than you.  It would look silly if you had enormous fangs.”

“But mine are so tiny!” she says.  She curls her lip back and shows him.  “Looth!”  She still hasn’t gotten the hang of talking with her teeth out.  She will though, since she never really stops talking.

He retracts his. “You have perfectly healthy, normal fangs for a vampire your size,” he tells her.

She pouts, and hers disappear as well.  “Okay,” she says.  “Let me see your murder face.”

“My what?” he says.

“You know,” she says.  “I was practicing faces in the mirror and look!”  She holds her hands out in front of her, like she’s trying to keep him back.  She furrows her brow, and her eyes go dark.  Her brow gets more pronounced.  Veins dance under her skin, black as her eyes.  She grins at him with sharp teeth.  “Muhdeh fath,” she says.

“Skye,” he says.  “That’s not a face we make at other people.”

She frowns, with her fangs sticking out against her lower lip.

“I’m serious,” he says.  “Put it away.”

She makes a point of hissing at him, lips curled, like that’s going to scare him.  And it’s childish and wrong but she’s irking him, so he gives it back.  His fangs are bigger, anyway.  

She pulls back.  And she laughs.  At him.  “Oh, wow,” she says.  “You’re like a puppy.”

He doesn’t point out that making her laugh takes her out of ‘murder face’ mode, but he is going to keep it in mind.  “I am nothing like a puppy,” he says.

She keeps laughing.  “You are!” she insists.  “You were like-” She puts her index fingers in front of her upper lip, making mock fangs instead of just using her real ones.  She’s wrinkling her nose and her eyes are lighter than reason should allow.  “Grr,” she says.  “Look at me.  I’m Grant Ward.  King of the night!”

“I am your maker!” he protests.  “Skye!”

She’s almost in tears.  “No wonder I can’t see your murder face,” she says.  “I bet it’s just too adorable.”

He finds that she’s pulling laughter from him, when he wants to be indignant.  He wants her to take him seriously, but finds that he doesn’t mind this at all.  He actually likes it a lot.  “Sure, Skye,” he says.  “That’s what it is.”

She tosses her hair back over her shoulder.  Ward ignores the smell of it, weighed down with water and hair product.  His hair products, actually.  It’s like the smell of him is covering her.  He fights off another urge to let his fangs pop out. 

  
  


“You should get dressed,” he says.

Skye stops smiling.  “I don’t have any other clothes,” she says.  “Just the ones I was wearing.”

“Not even a bra?” he asks.  Why?  Why did he ask that immediately?

Skye shakes her head.  “It has mud and waitress blood and I think my blood in it,” Skye says.  “But hey, that’s what online shopping is for, right?”

“I, um,” he says.  “I’ll go get you a teeshirt.  And some sweatpants.”

She smiles at him.

“What?” he asks.

“Do you have anything to eat?” she says.

“Get dressed,” he replies.  “And then we can eat.  And talk.  We should talk.”

  
  


She emerges from the bathroom with his tee shirt sticking to her breasts.  He can’t stop himself, or his fangs, but he keeps his mouth shut and tries to will them away.

“You’re…boiling blood?” Skye asks, leaning over his shoulder.  

Put them away, Grant.  Put them away.  “Not exactly,” he says, fangs finally back in.  “I’m simmering water, and then I’m heating the blood with the steam from the water.”

Skye rests her head on his arm.  Control yourself, Grant.  Control yourself.

“That seems complicated,” she replies.  “Can’t you just nuke it?”

“It doesn’t taste the same,” he says.

“Why can’t we just get it from the source?” she says.  “I mean, we won’t kill anyone, and we’ll just make them forget it even happened.”

Ward shakes his head.  “Because bad things happen when you mix with humans,” he tells her.

“Bad for them, or bad for us?” Skye asks.

“Both,” Ward replies.  “You know there are humans that come after vampires, right?”

Skye looks up at him.  Excited.  Enchanted, even.  “No way,” she says.  “There are vampire hunters?”

“They usually just call themselves ‘hunters,’” Ward says.  “But some of them stick only to vampires.”  It kind of feels like he’s having ‘the talk,’ with a child.  And he really, really needs to stop comparing Skye to a child, because she is very much not one.  She just doesn’t know what she’s gotten into.

“So wait,” Skye asks.  “There are other monsters?”  

“Skye,” he says, almost amused.  “There isn’t even just one kind of vampire.”

She blinks.  “Killer,” she decides, and then sticks her finger into the pot.

“Careful!” Ward says.

“Can’t feel burns, right?” Skye asks.  She pulls her finger out, dripping brown-red, and sticks it into her mouth.  Then sucks. 

Ward looks away.  “You can if they light you on fire,” he says.

“All kinds?” Skye says.  “Or just certain kinds?”

“All,” he says.  She reaches again, and this time he grabs her wrist.  “Go sit,” he says.  “It’s done, anyway.”

She glowers at him for a moment, and he arches his eyebrows in response.  With a huff, she goes to the table.

  
  


He brings her blood in a Mickey Mouse mug that he got with the apartment.  His mug says “World’s Best Teacher” on it.  It was a gift.

“Oh,” Skye says, looking at the white cup as he sits down.  “You…teach?”

He shrugs.  “I teach night classes, mostly,” he says.  “English and Russian and sometimes Italian if they need it.”

She blinks.  “Mostly.  You can teach during the day?  You can…go outside?”

He looks at his cup of blood.  “I said there was more than one kind of vampire,” he replies.  “The main myths you hear only relate to one specific kind, usually.”

Skye takes a sip of her blood and her face sours.  She glares at Ward.  “This is awful,” she says.  “It takes nothing like waitress.”

“Well it was pre-frozen,” he tells her.  

“It sucks,” she says.  “It tastes stale.”

“We’re not going hunting,” he says.

She pouts.  She’s got blood on her upper lip.  “Fine,” she says.  “Keep talking about vampires, or something.” She waves her hand at him.

“Well,” Ward says.  “The myths you usually hear are fairly European.  And there are plenty of European vampires, don’t get me wrong, but even there it kind of breaks off into factions.  And so to categorize vampire type by area would be kind of silly, at this point, especially in the United States, where there’s a little bit of everyone.  And the type of maker you have determines the kind of vampire you turn out to be, so you’re going to be pretty down the line with what you’ve heard, since I am, and my maker was, and his maker was, and-”

“Different types,” Skye says, in a voice that is very clearly fed up with him.  “I get it.”

“So you,” he says, and gestures towards her.  “Are like me.  In that you need to feed no less than four times a week, and you can go out in the sun but should stay in the shade and your abilities aren’t going to work.  Abilities like strength and speed and healing only work at night.  You’ll know when it’s night pretty much immediately, you can just feel it.  You’ll notice the difference if you wake up at all during the day, but I don’t really expect you to-”

“So there are vampires that can just go out in the sun?” she asks.

“Technically, yes,” he says.

“But not us,” she replies.  “Can we eat garlic?”

“Oh sure,” Ward says.  “But food doesn’t really matter much anymore.  You can enjoy it in a taste sense but after a while it just-”

She slumps.  “Oh.”

“I’m sorry I’m not more interesting,” he says, if only to make her happy again.  “And I’m sorry we can’t always go outside during the day like other vampires can.   I’m sure you spent a lot of time in the sun.”  Not because she has little bits of gold in her hair, though.  Not because of that.  He hadn’t even noticed those.

She stirs her food with her finger for a moment, looks into the mug like she’s waiting for it to speak.  Finally, she glances up at him.

“You saved me,” she says.  “I don’t care if you’re the kind of vampire that has a forked tongue or turns into a bat or burns instantly.  You saved my life.”

“Not technically,” he says.  “You are still dead.”

“I could be deader than this,” she says.  “And you know it.”

He watches as she pulls her finger out of her cup and watches the blood drip off her nail.

“Are you tired?” he asks.  “You were just made.  You should rest.”

“I am pretty tired,” Skye admits.

Ward gives her a smile.  “Finish your dinner and I’ll put you to bed.”

Skye sneers at that.  “You’re not my dad.”

“I wouldn’t want to be,” he replies, quicker than he should.  But she just cocks her head.  “You need to eat.”

“What if I don’t eat?” she says.  “What if I refuse to eat unless you take me hunting?”

He levels her gaze.  “Don’t do that,” he says.

“Or what?” she replies.  Why is she doing this to him?  Why does she feel the need to do this to him, specifically?

“You know what,” he says.

She frowns.  “But you promised.”

“A promise can only be kept if you’re here,” he says.  “And if I let you starve, well-” He gestures.

She seems like she’s going to protest, but he thinks her tiredness wins out.  “Fine,” she mumbles, again, and finishes her meal.

He smiles at her, and she does not smile back.  He tries to pretend it doesn’t bother him.  “Come on,” he says.  “You can have my room.”  

  
  


“You’ve got a bed,” Skye says.  She steps in the bedroom with caution.  It doesn’t seem to suit her.  “With blankets.”

“Yeah,” he says.  He’s embarrassed by it, suddenly, though he doesn’t think he should be.

“That’s…” she pauses.  “That’s oddly human of you.”

“Were you expecting a coffin?” he asks.  He lets himself sit on the bed without thinking about it.

“Maybe,” Skye says.  She sits down next to him. She’s right.  This does feel remarkably human.  Too human, really.

“I’ve slept in coffins,” he says.  “And on cots.  And on floors.  I like having a bed.”

“I’m glad you have one,” she says.  She bounces a little on the mattress.  “It feels pretty comfy.”

“Most vampires don’t worry about that kind of stuff,” he says.  “They say we can’t feel comfort or discomfort.”

She lets out a huff of what could be sadness or frustration, and then falls back.

“I think we can,” she says.  “I think they’re full of shit.”

“Why do you think I have a bed?” he replies.  He allows himself to look at her, from over his shoulder.  She needs a good rest.  She needs a lot of things, actually, but Ward will start with sleep.   And his bed is her bed.  “Skye,” he says.  “Why didn’t you ask to go home?”

“What?” she asks.

“When you were yelling at me,” he says.  “You asked to make a phonecall, but you never asked if you could go home.”

She tilts her head towards her shoulder in a show of nonchalance.  “It’s not important.”

“Don’t you have anything at home that you want?” he asks.  “We could go get it.”

“I lived in a van, Grant,” she says, looking over to his nightstand.  “And if Quinn thinks I’m dead, then he’s probably confiscated it.”

“You lived in a van?” he asks.

“I did,” she says.  “Until a couple of hitmen found me and dragged me out of it.”

  
  


Ward’s stomach lurches, not with sadness but with rage, the pure kind he tries to keep himself from feeling.  He remembers how he found her, and now he can put men to the hands that left bruises on Skye’s body, to the fractures in her arms and the fingerprint-shaped bruises.  He doesn’t have names, yet, but he feels compelled to find, to hunt, to make bleed.

It’s vicious and savage and he can’t stop.  Not when they dragged her from her home.

It’s like she senses it.  “Grant,” she says.  “It’s fine.  I’m-” she pauses.

He looks at the floor.  “You’re-”  He doesn’t know what to say.

“Fine,” she says.  “I’m okay.”

He could’ve saved her.  Somehow.  He’d been heading in her general direction, anyway.  Or what must’ve been her direction, if they’d left her on the side of the road.  He could’ve found them when they were beating her.  When it started, when she was screaming for help.  Had she been screaming?  They must’ve tied her up, put her in a car, driven her out to the woods.

He’s going to throw up.  He’s going to throw up, and he hasn’t fed. He could’ve gone out earlier, heard her screaming earlier, found her when there was still half a chance that she wouldn’t have to be…this.

He couldn’t have.  He couldn’t have, he didn’t even know her.  But if he had, if he had.  He would’ve done anything to save her, before it came to this.

  
  


She gets under the covers, starts to get comfortable.  He takes that as his cue.

“Can you stay?” she asks, suddenly.  Her voice is small.  Almost scared.  “Just until I fall asleep.  You don’t have to lay down if you don’t want to but-”

“Of course I’ll stay,” he says.  He flicks off the light and returns to the edge of the bed.

“The last time I woke up it was to-You know,” she says.  “So you can imagine why I want you to stay.”

He puts his hand on her ankle, through the covers.  Just to reassure her.  “Anything for you,” he says.  She shifts again.

“Grant?” she says.  “Could you lay down?”

He nods.  “I’ll stay on top of the covers, okay?” She doesn’t reply.  He lays on his side, facing her back.  He tentatively places an arm around her, and she snuggles against it.  He tries not to gulp.

“Goodnight, Grant,” she says.

“It’s morning, actually,” he replies.

“Shut up,” she says.  So he does.


End file.
